We
were sorry for him, but youth requires even more discipline than age.
Donkin grinned venomously. From that day he became pitiless; told Jimmy
that he was a "black fraud"; hinted to us that we were an imbecile lot,
daily taken in by a vulgar nigger. And Jimmy seemed to like the fellow!
Singleton lived untouched by human emotions. Taciturn and unsmiling, he
breathed amongst us--in that alone resembling the rest of the crowd.
We were trying to be decent chaps, and found it jolly difficult; we
oscillated between the desire of virtue and the fear of ridicule; we
wished to save ourselves from the pain of remorse, but did not want
to be made the contemptible dupes of our sentiment. Jimmy's hateful
accomplice seemed to have blown with his impure breath undreamt of
subtleties into our hearts. We were disturbed and cowardly. That we
knew. Singleton seemed to know nothing, understand nothing. We had
thought him till then as wise as he looked, but now we dared, at times,
suspect him of being stupid--from old age. One day, however, at dinner,
as we sat on our boxes round a tin dish that stood on the deck within
the circle of our feet, Jimmy expressed his general disgust with men and
things in words that were particularly disgusting.
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